I’ve never been embarrassed to tell anyone I graduated from the State University of New York at Binghamton. It’s not in the Ivy League, it’s not as well-known as Berkeley or Michigan or Virginia, but it’s a well-regarded, selective public institution. A lot of smart people learn and teach there, and the university’s overall trajectory has been very positive. So as an alumnus, it’s just tremendously dispiriting to open up the New York Times and read headlines like “Binghamton Lecturer Critical of Athletics Is Fired.”
Apparently, an “adjunct lecturer who accused the athletic department of giving preferential treatment to men’s basketball players and pressuring her to change her grading policy for players was dismissed Tuesday.”
This “comes at a time when Binghamton’s basketball program, which reached the N.C.A.A. tournament for the first time last season, has hit a nadir. The university dismissed six players last week, including the starting point guard Emanuel Mayben, who was arrested on charges of selling and possessing of crack cocaine.”
The lecturer, Sally Dear, taught “human development.” “Seven Binghamton men’s basketball players majored in human development last year, and Dear said she believed some of them received preferential treatment.“They know that people have been covering up for the athletes and not holding them to the same standard for other students,” Dear said. “They know that athletes who are not passing classes have been given independent studies to carry them through.”
According to the department Web site:
The Department of Human Development provides multidisciplinary undergraduate and graduate programs that examine individual, social and structural aspects of human development. Students will engage in a critical exploration of social, cultural, economic, historical and political frameworks and the ways in which individuals, families and communities are situated within them. Diversity is highly valued in this department that is committed to exploring issues of equity and social justice, and fostering the understanding of complex human conditions.
You know what’s worst? How predictable this all is. I mean, who could possibly have imagined that in its haste to build a national reputation by promoting the men’s basketball team from Division III to Division I, the university would compromise its integrity, lower its academic standards, invite lawlessness and criminality, create strife between the athletics department and the professoriate, and be subject to embarrassing coverage in the media? Why, there’s just no precedent, other than every other big-times sports program, ever.
And for what? So I can spend 90 minutes watching the team get blown out in the first round of the NCAA tournament once every five years? For this, I get to read about how the athletics director, who resigned yesterday, compared the basketball team to a zoo, prompting the business manager of the Binghamton Zoo to write an indignant letter saying:
Not one of our tigers has been arrested with cocaine. No otter knocks over old ladies to shoplift condoms. Our bear doesn’t have temper tantrums and storm off his exhibit. You won’t find any of our lemurs busted for smoking pot. So, please, stop insulting zoos by comparing those criminals to us.
That’s just great.
12 Responses to Oh, the Shame
unusedusername - October 1, 2009 at 4:11 pm
We need minor leagues for basketball and football just like we do with baseball. I don’t know how those sports got mixed up with college, but it’s time to separate the two. There is no reason why a person who wants to be a pro-basketball player should go to college, and there is no reason to lower academic standards so that people who don’t belong can pass the classes. It hurts the sport, and it hurts education.Yes, I enjoyed going to football games in college, too, but it isn’t worth this.
goxewu - October 1, 2009 at 7:07 pm
unusedusername is right, but I suspect a little disingenuousness in the “I don’t know how those sports got mixed up with college” part. Of course he (or possibly she) does.A long, long time ago, when amateur sports were the province of the same sort of privileged young gentlemen who went to college, somebody said, “Why, the fellows from my college can certainly beat the fellows from your college in a friendly game of football.” So they played a game, and then another next year and the thing got to be a fixture, with lots of other schools joining in. Next thing you know, the fellows were bringing in “ringers” to increase the chances of victory. Then it turned out that the public would actually pay to see these games and early in the 20th century, college football became bigtime. 120,000 people saw USC vs. Notre Dame at Soldier Field in Chicago in the 1920s; George Gipp of “win one for the Gipper” fame was what was called a “tramp athlete,” i.e., a de facto pro or semi-pro who went from school to school just to play football. Then came radio, then came television, and then came the millions of people who never made it out of high school able to say “we” when holding a brewski on Saturdays and referring to the team from a college they could never have attended, while they watch them play on television.The athletics departments at bigtime jock schools are semi-autonomous (and that’s a weak “semi”). The athletic director usually makes more than the president, and the highest-paid person in all of higher ed is supposedly USC’s football coach, Pete Carroll, at $4M-plus per year. Bigtime athletics departments are analogous to the military in banana republics: the nominal civilian governments exist at their pleasure.The point is that bigtime revenue sports (football and men’s basketball) weren’t attached to colleges suddenly, by fiat. They grew within higher ed and are now almost inextricably intertwined with it. The alleged money-making powers of revenue sports is greatly overstated–at a lot of the biggest programs, it’s little more than break-even–but the PR and alumni loyalty aspects, alas, are not. Alums do give to Ol’ U. because of the attachment they feel via the football or basketball team, and kids from Arizona apply to George Mason because they’ve heard about the school from the year it was a “Cinderella” team in the NCAA basketball tournament.Note: The former Washington Post sports columnist and now co-host of the sports talk show, “Pardon the Interruption” on ESPN, is also a Binghampton graduate. Mr. Carey–who seems to get on television hiumself–might ring up Mr. Kornheiser and ask him what he thinks of the Binghampton situation.
suomynona - October 1, 2009 at 8:01 pm
goxewu, outstanding post. I remember when my alma mater, one of those schools that competes in NCAA D1 but in a conference with a no-athletic-scholarship policy, made the NCAA basketball tournament while I was a student. Everybody talked about how this would increase the number of West-Coast applicants and give the university a chance to earn large sums of cash by winning games in the tournament; but where does that money go (assuming, of course, that we would have won)?There were panels on ESPN, I think on Outside the Lines productinos, where they brought in a bunch of people, including sports agents, to discuss the fine line between big-time collegiate and professional sports. Seems like they have chat sessions about this once in a while as a release valve, and then things go on as they have for so long without much attention to the issue. I agree with unusedusername that in many cases these ‘students’ have no business being in college, and they it would be better for them, given their talents, to make pro money without going through the motions at university (even if it’s heading to Europe to play basketball still for a pretty high salary). On the other hand, maybe some of these kids do get something out of their education, even if they went in thinking it was just a stepping stone on the path to pro sports.I still entertain the argument, as much as I hate to, that it’s more than athletes in lucrative collegiate sports progarms who are going to college for the wrong reasons, and ought not to be there in the first place. These kinds of athletes (I was a non-spectator-sport athlete in college, and found the experience invaluable) might represent an extreme; but what about all the rest of the students who similarly go through the motions without ever having been interested in actually studying economics or history? There’s the sports business, and then there’s the college degree business…
winstonbarclay - October 2, 2009 at 9:54 am
Actually, there is a very good reason for athletes with professional aspirations to attend college — if only colleges would recognize and embrace it. Players, coaches and other athletic professionals face enormous pressures, including too much money too quickly, daily stress, agents, conditioning, the media, and a multitude of temptations. If we could only get over the idea that athletics is “extra-curricular,” we could put together academic programs designed specifically for the needs of student who aspire to athletic careers. Professional sports careers are highly valued in our society, and handsomely compensated. Colleges have no reason to to apologize for preparing these students for these highly-competitive careers — any more than we have to apologize for training other professional performers — actors, singers, designers, instrumentalists, dancers, writers. A degree in “athletic performance” might include physiology, contract law, financial planning, ethics, acting, media training, preparation for post-performance careers, dancing, coaching skills, rehab therapy — a smart institution could put together a very attractive package. What we SHOULD apologize for is allowing athletically talented students to pass through our institutions without education in the specialized skills they need to succeed during and after their athletic careers.
goxewu - October 2, 2009 at 11:00 am
Mr. Barclay’s comment is oddly circular: Since professional sports are corrupting (“too much money too quickly, daily stress, agents, conditioning, the media, and a multitude of temptations”), he says colleges are justified in corrupting themselves by recruiting athletes only marginally qualified to be college students and expose them to daily stress, conditioning, the media and a multitude of temptations, because it’s kind of “education” in what they’re going to have to deal with later. Swell.The notion of a degree in “athletic performance” is fanciful at best. How long does Mr. Barclay think it’ll take for the curriculum for that “very attractive package” degree to collapse into merely get class credit for practicing and playing in games, i.e. a degree in football? Moreoever, the requirements in physiology, contract law, financial planning, etc., are exactly the kinds of serious, difficult classes revenue sports athletes–and their athletic departments–try to avoid. There’s a reason that so many football players major in the likes of “recreation administration” and “human development.”A lot of the 120 bigtime football schools suit up over a hundred players, and there’s only one professional football league extant. (The arena leagues have collapsed and this new football league hasn’t played a game. If the unlamented WFL, USFL and XFL are any indication, the new league will last about fifteen minutes.) Which is to say, there’s not a lot of career opportunities for players with degrees in footb…er, “athletic performance.” Plus, half of ‘em are limping around with the effects of injuries, especially concussions. (The rate of early dementia in former NFL players is 19 times the national average for men.)If colleges didn’t have bigtime football programs, they wouldn’t have to admit so many substandard applicants. If they didn’t have so many substandard students (including students made substandard by the 40+ weekly hours required by their putatively extra-curricular sports), then they wouldn’t have “athletically talented students…pass[ing] through…without education in the specialized skills they need to succeed during and after their athletic careers.” And if colleges didn’t have that, they wouldn’t have anything for which to apologize.
evbiii - October 2, 2009 at 11:48 am
As a SUNY Binghamton alum I was glad we went division one. I love the idea of making the news with the same issues as Florida State. I hope we get a football team so I can attend a homecoming that doesn’t revolve around soccer.
fturner - October 2, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Okay, the sports end of this fiasco has been bandied about enough ….what about the dismissal of the faculty lecturer – for attempting to maintain some level of integrity and the objectives of higher ed?!! THAT is the travesty!
goxewu - October 2, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Sally Dear is just one casualty. Before her, there was a woman at the University of Tennessee. She sued and a whole lot of academic corruption was revealed. And before her, there were others at other bigtime jock schools. After all these people, there will be others, and still others.”The sports end of this fiasco” is the war in which Sally Dear is a casualty. And to discuss it is not to “bandy it about.” Saying we’ve “bandied [it] about enough” is like saying we’ve bandied health care reform about enough, what about the lady in Des Moines who’s having trouble paying for her medicine? Just like the current health care system will cause the lady in Des Moines to continue to struggle paying for her medicine, “the sports end of this fiasco” will continue to cause the firing of any number of Sally Dears.
winstonbarclay - October 2, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Well, if we want to avoid “corruption” we had better terminate our programs in business and law, to begin with. It’s true that a high-level sports career is a long shot. A high-level career in theater, film, music, dance and a variety of other performance fields is a long-shot, too — and they are all fields filled with corruption.
goxewu - October 2, 2009 at 8:59 pm
No, no, no. College football IS corrupt by its nature, e.g., the Sally Dear case, as it exists in colleges. Business and law schools, as they exist in college, are not corrupt by their natures as they exist in college. Just because some businessmen or lawyers may become corrupt, doesn’t make business and law schools corrupt. Sports are supposed to be extra-curricular, even though the average D-I football player spends 44 hours a week on his sport, more hours than in-class and studying combined. “Longshot” careers as pro players means that college football players are simply exploited as unpaid workers (the “educations” are borderline worthless) in an industry in which the colleges and the TV networks make, literally, billions. Reasonable people have reasonably called it a “plantation” system. This is hardly similar to students in the arts having longshot chances at making livings directly from dance, music, theater or art. They aren’t paid nothing for starring in movies or plays or art exhibitions from which the colleges make a ton of money.One suspects Mr. Barclay knows this. His reply, above, is sheer sophistry.What’s puzzling, however, is his concern over the firing of Sally Dear amounting to a “travesty,” unconnected to the greater travesty of bigtime college revenue sports and their corruption of the whole academic enterprise.
raymond_j_ritchie - October 3, 2009 at 2:48 am
One thing we can be thankful for in Australia is that we do not have Athletics Faculties running professional football and basketball in universities. Even in sport-mad Australia the American experience of college football and basketball is so notorious that although the “investment opportunity” comes up now and again the universities so far have shown enough common sense to avoid it like the plague. Professional sports run their own clubs with casinos and poker machines to finance themselves. All sorts of underworld and organised crime scandals occur but who cares – what would you expect of football clubs? The experience of Sally Dear is not new. One of my colleagues got the heavy treatment from the coach when she tried to fail a guy in the @#$% football team. When I was a post-doc in the US one of the universities where I worked had a scandal involving recruitment for the football team. It had all the elements of a badly written afternoon soap. Students in the cheerleader squad were employed by the coach to take out promising high school footballers and give them a taste of the rewards of a football scholarship in posh hotels. The coach used state funds to pay the young ladies and when found out he escaped to South America with a bag of money. Faculty in Arts and Sciences had the time of their lives asking naive questions of the university president in the senate like “can you give more details on precisely what entertainment was provided by the cheerleaders”. Best attended senate meetings in years.
davi2665 - October 5, 2009 at 2:08 pm
One of my former graduate students had the job of “tutoring” players on a well known big ten basketball team. On several occasions, she caught them cheating from each other on exams, but said that it didn’t matter because even working collectively, they were unable to pass. When she complained, she was disinvited from the tutoring position, and the very sympathetic professor in change of that portion of their curriculum made sure they received appropriate passing grades. The Sally Dear dismissal is outrageous and inappropriate, but not surprising. The win-at-any-cost mentality that leads to the toleration of abominable behavior from the likes of Bobby Knight, and pays a coach several times the salary of an outstanding Provost or world class scholar, clearly shows the priorities of Universities in an entertainment oriented environment.